Change

As the Venom serum entered Dilos's body, he immediately felt a slight change. It was subtle, but the spot where he'd injected the serum began to grow warm, and the heat gradually spread throughout his body.

A few minutes later, Dilos felt as though he were in a sauna. The faint warmth had turned into a stifling heat.

Dilos knew the heat was being released as his body underwent constant modification. Now that his Guoshu training had reached the An Jin level, he could control the pores on his body and open them to release the heat as vapor, which would make him feel much more comfortable. But he didn't.

Modifying his body and making it evolve required energy, and the kind of modification Dilos was undergoing demanded an especially large amount. This heat was also a form of energy. Letting it dissipate would seriously hinder the process.

So unless his body reached its limit for withstanding the heat, he wouldn't release it.

With that in mind, Dilos endured the steadily rising temperature until the excessive heat began to cause a slight stinging sensation. Only then did he control his pores and release some of the heat.

White vapor drifted around him, then dissipated after a few seconds. Once enough heat had escaped, Dilos closed his pores and stopped the loss. When the heat inside his body built back up to its previous level, he repeated the process.

He kept this up for eight hours. After that, Dilos couldn't take it anymore. The long hours of endurance and the huge amount of energy his body had used left him mentally exhausted. He needed proper rest.

Fortunately, by then, the energy his body was using for the transformation had become far less than it had been during the first few hours. Dilos went back to bed and closed his eyes, which kept drooping shut. He was utterly exhausted and didn't want to think about anything. All he wanted was a good night's sleep.

The next day, Dilos woke up around noon. Unfortunately, he hadn't woken naturally. Hunger had jolted him awake!

Grrrrrrrr...

Dilos grimaced as his stomach growled incessantly. That alone would have been bad enough, but his stomach also hurt from hunger!

Clack.

At the sound, Dilos looked down and saw that his casual step had left a web of cracks in the tile beneath his foot.

"Are these tiles really that flimsy? I lived here for over a month without anything happening. How come one step cracked them today?"

Dilos muttered in confusion, then suddenly froze. He felt like he'd forgotten something. He calmed down and thought back over what had happened. That was when he remembered injecting the Venom serum the day before.

"Am I done mutating?"

Still puzzled, Dilos walked carefully toward the mirror above the sink, excitement flickering in his eyes.

He checked his reflection. His face and body looked no different, and he smiled with satisfaction.

"Yeah! It worked! It worked! Hahahahaha!"

He'd struggled for years for this moment. It wasn't the end of the road, but for Dilos, it was a wonderful beginning.

Grrrrrr...

His stomach growled again before he could enjoy the moment for long. Only then did Dilos notice how pale and thin he looked, like a malnourished flagpole. The pain in his stomach from hunger kept gnawing at him.

Without even stopping to wash up, he rushed to the fridge. He yanked the door open so hard that it tore right off. The door left a trail of afterimages as it cut through the air with a whistle, then crashed through the television with a sharp snap.

But Dilos paid none of that any mind. He was so hungry that he couldn't spare the energy to think about anything else. He didn't care whether the bread and milk in the fridge were too cold, or whether eating uncooked beef and pork would make him sick. He grabbed everything and stuffed it into his mouth!

In less than ten minutes, he'd devoured all the food in the half-height fridge like a gluttonous monster. Yet his stomach still didn't feel full. He was still ravenous, and it hadn't even begun to bulge.

The frantic raid on the fridge had only eased Dilos's hunger a little. In his current state, he needed more food.

"Tch." Dilos clicked his tongue in annoyance. After gauging how hungry he still was, he gritted his teeth and called a few fast-food places he knew. Ignoring the shocked reactions of the employees on the other end, he ordered twenty large meals from each one.

Dilos hadn't wanted to go out to eat, but there weren't any large restaurants or diners on the few streets around his rental. There were only a few small eateries, and by that hour, they'd already sold out.

Besides, even if he went several streets over to order food at a restaurant, he'd have to wait ten or twenty minutes just to get a single serving.

That wouldn't be nearly enough for him. So he'd decided to order delivery instead. Fortunately, not many people were ordering at that time, and the fast-food places delivered quickly. They were expected to arrive in about half an hour.

Even so, half an hour was no easy wait, especially for someone like Dilos, a "glutton" whose head was spinning with hunger and whose whole body felt weak.

"Ding-dong~"

So when Dilos heard the doorbell half an hour later, the bloodshot eyes he'd been staring at the door with flashed a chilling light. He dashed outside, ignored the strange looks from the delivery workers at the door, and roughly hauled their oversized bags of food into the house. Then he tossed them the cash he'd prepared in advance, shut the door, and carried the food into his room, leaving the delivery workers standing outside, staring at one another in bafflement.

"Is he going to eat all that by himself? Can he even finish it?" Delivery Worker A asked, as if asking someone else and himself at the same time.

Delivery Worker B said, "Should we listen in and see if it's really just him eating all that?"

As he spoke, Delivery Worker B was already putting the idea into action. He pressed his ear to Dilos's front door, trying to hear him eating.

The others grew curious too and crowded around to listen. But after a long while, there was still no sound from inside.

"Maybe he's just crazy," Delivery Worker C said with a dismissive curl of his lip. "I once saw a nutcase who was always convinced the world was about to end. He'd stockpile food at home, but the apocalypse never came, and a lot of his food went bad because he didn't store it properly."

The others nodded in agreement. Then Delivery Worker D said, "Whatever the case, it's none of our business anymore. I've got more work to do, so I'm leaving."

With that, Delivery Worker D left first. The others realized they were wasting their time, and when someone gave them an excuse to leave, they all followed.

Dilos had no idea what had happened outside. Even if he'd known, he wouldn't have cared. At worst, he could use his ability to make those people forget what they'd seen.

Dilos was busy devouring food in his room. The soundproofing was good, so neither the tearing of wrappers nor his frantic gulping disturbed anyone.

He wolfed down the meals one box at a time. As he ate, his gaunt body gradually regained its former shape: tall and lean, with strong, healthy muscles.

After a voracious feast, the floor around Dilos was covered in empty takeout containers streaked with grease, and his body had returned completely to normal.

Only then did Dilos stop feeling hungry. He could even feel that his stomach was getting a little too full.

It was the most satisfying meal of Dilos's life, but he never wanted to go through it again. Remembering how he hadn't been able to get full no matter how much he ate, he couldn't help worrying about his condition. Going on an eating binge like that was clearly abnormal. If it continued, he would inevitably draw attention from people with ulterior motives far too soon, which would be a serious disadvantage for him.

Fortunately, after that meal, Dilos's eating habits returned to normal. He figured the earlier binge had happened because his body had consumed a tremendous amount of nutrients and energy and urgently needed to replenish them.

Once he'd worked it out, Dilos let out a long breath of relief. No one could say whether the effects of genes on the body were good or bad. Even Richard Parker couldn't make an accurate judgment. He still needed long-term, continual experimentation to determine which kinds of gene implantation technology wouldn't cause negative effects in recipients.

"Huh?"

Dilos was quietly pleased with himself when he suddenly felt an itch between his fingers. He glanced down, then blurted, "What the hell is this?!"

Between the fingers on both of Dilos's hands, four pairs of huge, sharp, sturdy, milky-white claws had appeared without his noticing. They were about thirty centimeters long and gleamed coldly!

Then, as Dilos stared in shock, his eyes nearly popping out of his head, the claws silently retracted.